The 10 Most Popular Sites in Kenya

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend a pretty large and well attended ICT Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. My presentation was on internet marketing within a Pan-African context. In the course of doing my research using Alexa (http://www.alexa.com), a web site ranking service, I was very surprised to learn that Kenyaâ€™s most popular web sites have changed significantly in the last year or so. Okay, there are the usual suspects like Yahoo!, Google and the Daily Nation that receive tremendous traffic, as can be expected. However, even within the top ten, as of this writing, there are many that I had not anticipated, especially those that are social networking sites. I think the following findings are extremely important for anyone looking to leverage the Internet as a key marketing channel in Kenya, targeting Kenyans:

Google, unless you have been under a rock for the past few years is a company bent on world domination, seriously! Their mainstays, and core business remains internet search and online ads. Google recently set-up shop in Nairobi which is the regional HQ for East Africa. Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com) and Google Adsense (http://adsense.google.com) are the money machines behind their record earnings these last few years. Currently, Google is in the process of finalizing their acquisition of DoubleClick (http://www.doubleclick.com), one of the worldâ€™s leading online advertising networks. The number three (3) ranked site in Kenya is Googleâ€™s global site at http://www.google.com.

Who doesnâ€™t love FaceBook! I was pleasantly surprised to find just how popular this site is at number four (4) in Kenya. This ranking also suggests to me that lots of companies are losing productivity as all their workers are busy poking and adding friends to their lists every day. At the same time, any marketer should salivate at the opportunity to reach the Kenyan FaceBook market. A few months ago, FaceBook launched profile pages which let companies market themselves to FaceBook users. This initiative, in conjunction to buying ads on FaceBook presents a compelling proposition to reach Kenyanâ€™s online.

Windows Live Search is Microsoftâ€™s Search Engine. A latecomer to the search game, Live Search has grown significantly in the last few years but still lags a distant third to Google and Yahoo! Search. However, in terms of indexing and quality results, itâ€™s been quite impressive. Like with the other leading search engines, Live Search enables advertisers to market their offerings using sponsored listings, much like Google Adwords. As of this writing, Microsoftâ€™s bid at US$ 44 Billion for Yahoo! could significantly change the prospects for Windows Live Search which is already quite popular in Kenya.

Hi5, like FaceBook, is a popular social network. On a global scale, it lags far behind but for some reason seems to do better across several African Countries. This site, like FaceBook, presents an interesting marketing platform.

I must admit that the high ranking of YouTube at number seven (7) was a big surprise. I say so because the Google owned YouTube is the worldâ€™s leading video sharing web site. Now, in Kenya, where we are well accustomed to slow internet connections and erratic online experiences, people are actually spending a significant amount online watching streaming videos! Itâ€™s also refreshing to see Kenyan organizations such as NTV (http://www.youtube.com/user/NTVKenya) and the Kenya Red Cross (http://www.youtube.com/user/KenyaRedCross) having channels on YouTube. A BIG hint is that video growing fast online and any marketer should look at repurposing their content for a YouTube.

MSN is Microsoftâ€™s online portal that consolidates services such as email, chat, news, jobs, etc, much like Yahoo! has done. The site, which integrates a whole host of Microsoft offerings, has done well in the last few years as more and more users and businesses migrate to online business. As a marketing channel, together with Windows Live Search, this site presents an excellent platform to reach Kenyans.

Blogger is a leading site for users to create their own blogs. As blogs gain more and more momentum online, Kenya has not been left behind and a good number of Kenyan themed blogs are out there. So, it would seem that Kenyanâ€™s are following lots of blogs on Blogger and it would be an excellent marketing location for marketers to have corporate blogs here too.

RapidShare is a file sharing web site that lets you upload up 100 megabytes as a single file. The free service is surprisingly high at number ten (10), especially considering that like YouTube, Kenya does not have the best internet infrastructure for this kind of thing. It would also appear that users in Kenya like to exchange files, probably in the form of music, applications and documents, online.

These sites round off the top ten. In terms of the best of the rest, here are the notable sites with online marketing opportunities in the top twenty (20):

The Author

Moses Kemibaro

Moses Kemibaro is the Founder of Dotsavvy, Kenya’s first Digital Business Agency which he established in 2002. He also currently serves as the Commercial Manager in East Africa for the Perform Group, the leading global digital sports media business that owns Goal.com, the world’s leading digital destination for football content with over 70 million users per month globally - and 2 million in Kenya.

Moses is a seasoned digital services professional having worked in Africa’s Internet Industry for over 15 years. In 2012 he was the Sales Director for Africa at InMobi, the world’s leading Independent mobile ad network where he led sales in Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana. Between 2010 and 2012, Moses was the Founding Regional Manager at Dealfish East Africa (now known as OLX Kenya) which he grew from scratch to become the leading online classifieds on mobile and desktop in Kenya and Uganda.

Previously, Moses worked at companies such as 3mice Interactive Media and Africa Online at the very start of Kenya’s digital revolution. Moses is also an award-winning and often quoted TechBlogger at MosesKemibaro.com where he rants and raves about all things digital in Kenya and Africa.

This list is not up-to-date & the author should up date the post. I also recommend the author to list sites owned by Kenyans or which operates in Kenya. Here is the updated list of the most popular Kenyan blogs and websites in Kenya. Kindly update the list. Thank you

nice reading about the top sites in Kenya but it would have been even more better to rate only Kenyan sites, that way it would have made a much more local appeal. by rating local sites, you would have been promoting the local web masters. am wishing with time i will get the required traffic for my site to be rated among the best. http://www.wakenya.biz the kenyan facebook

Nice survey, but i have to differ with the actuality of the stats. While it is indeed true that most kenyans go to yahoo first before any other site…yahoo does get unnecessary hits whereby it’s URL has been configured to be the homepage for all browsers in all cyber cafes in kenya. This adds its hits whenever ones logs on to the net even if the don’t necessarily go to yahoo. Hey guyz pliz check out vishasha.co rank it. I need feedback.

Kevin. Thats an intersting point. I doubt just cyber cafes are responsible for the large amount of traffic heading to Yahoo.com. However, I was just using data from Alexa.com and thats what its saying – Yahoo is on top!

[…] The Top 10 sites in Kenya article that I published a couple of months ago continues to draw lots of comments and reading. This gave me an idea. What if I could do a periodical round up of interesting Kenyan and International web sites that I come across every so often. Another inspiration behind this idea is the Blog IT column in Adam Magazine to which I made a contribution a few months ago. So, now, here it is, the first edition of SiteReview! […]

I went through Alexa and was thoroughtly impressed with the amount of information available. Interestingly you can even tell which particular areas on the site people are interested in. Moses, just some few clarifications – when you look at the Safaricom rankings in the areas people are interested in within the site- it seems most of those who visit the website don’t go past the home page (at 78%). Is my inference correct? Also, is it possible to tell how many people visit a website – say yahoo-actual figures not percentages?

what happens is that the 78% refers to the fact that most people navigate to the homepage first. Alexa cannot track the internal pages that most people will visit. This information is normally available to the site owner by analyzing their log files using a software like Webtrends. Another way to track traffic is by installing a site traffic tool like Google Analytics. These tools provide very detailed information on actual hits and unique visitors to a web site. I hope this information helps?

Well i just wanted to make some clarifications concerning alexas indexing service. Well over and above the one hundred free analytics given by alexa,you can for some fee acquire all the detailed information pertaining to your site.This information will include the actual hits per page,the unique visitors,where they have been reffered from,their browsers and all such other information.All these can be found on their site under http://www.alexa.com/site/company/technology under the heading overall its a good source of info,alternatively one can use free site tools like bravenet http://www.bravenet.com.

As for http://www.wanakenya.biz if you are a coder which i suppose you are,then you must surely realise that you have done nothing to optimise your site.I’m talking about SEO and SEM ,I would suggest you look at your meta tags i have seen the code the syntax is all wrong,plus the search robots,and crawlers cant see your site.So instead of wishing to make the top ten,you can actually work towards it.For more details hola at me at [email protected]. Well as for http://www.vishasha.com,kevin your site is splendid,i mean real good.But you sacrificed too much for form over function.By using too much flash the search robots have problems seeing your site and reading i.e indexing all the pages properly.Also looking at your the source code of your home page i noticed you have not optimised the Tags at all,the only meta tag i see on your site is this ,you need that optimised and you need to allow search bots to see you so you can move from rank 3,162,810 (as of 25 sept 2008) to a plausible 100,000 worldwide i can help you attain that goal ,hola at me [email protected],The Search Engine University.

I’ve been monitoring Alexa rankings for Kenya for a while. I have a problem with how Alexa gathers its information. If I’m not wrong, Alexa collects information from browsers that have their toolbar or some sort of plugin. This would make the rankings a bit bias though not entirely false. Would you mind clarifying this?

[…] had an interesting ranking of the top 10 mobile web sites in Kenya. Some time last year, I posted a story on the 10 most popular web sites in Kenya. Its interesting to see as below just how different the ranking stands when it comes to the mobile […]

Thanks for the statistics. Am also of the opinion that over and above the top ten world websites, you can rank Kenyan sites and that will be of much benefit to Kenyans and their websites. You can also rank future top ten websites where certainly http;//www.softkenya.com will be ranked top five. You doubt it/? just visit the site.

This is an accurate listing. How about sites and blog platforms that are owned by individuals and receiving great returns and traffic. It would be nice to rate individual effort on sites and know who is on top in Kenya self-made webmasters.

You should also consider doing a list of PURELY Kenyan websites which are popular. This one is great but Google and facebook are not truly kenya. You could call it “Most used websites by Kenyans” Yes EAStandards and Nation is perfectly rigth on spot

[…] Yet Americans export consumer web and mobile technology at a tremendous pace.Â I ran across this post on a Kenyan blog that listed the top websites that Kenyans visit as of March, 2008.Â Nine out of ten were started on […]

You should do another top 10 list. This one is now outdated. The top 10 has changed massively. I also concur with ‘Kenya Directory’ that you should compile a list of sites with Kenyan content. .-= Mr. Majani´s last blog ..Unataka Nini =-.

the next big thing in Kenya.you can search for your lost National Identification cards,passports,staff id.etc as long as the where lost in Kenya,plus you get the service for free and you also get exclusive direction where to collect it. CHECK IT OUT

Still on the issue of rankings, how come those on blogger have lost their rankings despite maintaining the same stats. Traffic on my site http://www.careerpointkenyajobs.co.ke has gone up by 8% and yet Alexa ranking has dropped from 26 to a low of 85 in less than a month.

Thank you for compiling the list for us,but from my point of view,employees don’t loose productivity because of social sites like facebook.Infact, fb has created a channel through which companies can advertise their goods and services both locally and internationally and with the population on facebook, good marketing can lead to increased sales and publicity……besides taking a break and catching up with friends once in a while in the office is not such a bad thing now or is it??

Hi Moses,thanks for taking your time to collect data and come op with these new statistics,this right here is a a very informative article,i am of the opinion that these websites should be put in some sort of categories like for example: Arts & Entertainment,Business,Computers,Travel and Leisure e.t.c as this would show who are the leaders in different sectors for example Property Leois the Leading Real Estate website. I like your interesting blog,heads up !!

this is a great piece of information for us kenyans.all we learn from those online tutorials is that we should conduct a market research before embarking onon our advertising campaigns.bt they dont provide such raw data . thanks coz i didnt know of such a useful tool (alexa) plus moses,iam try to promote a kenyan online dating website http://www.tudate.com and it is becoming alot of workload through the natural /algorithmic method is there any way you can advise me?

@jamuel I am not really able to give any advise except that promotion costs money – its as simple as that. At the same time, once you get traffic, you also need to ensure that your web site “delivers” on expectations, and therefore in this respect content is king.

What is more important for any website is how it ranks on Google for any particular keyword. It is still easy to rank highly for keywords related to Kenya. For example, I got http://www.school-chairs.com/ to rank in the top ten in just one month for the keyword “Kenya School Furniture”.

@jzigne true but remember that the key phrase you are using is very specific to the kind of content you have on your web site. The idea on this list was to see which sites generally attract the most traffic.

this is a site to watch toohttp://www.sebule.com soon will be kenyan most visited website Sebule classifieds Kenya is a free content website for companies and personal users where everyone can post or publish an ad, services, new products or even second hand products free of charge. Buyers and sellers can post ads, publish or look for services and products at no cost within sebule classifieds as they browse all it’s pages with no need to register. Sebule Kenya is a web where anyone can buy and sell products or services for free.

Hi Moses, I actually landed on your page because I was searching for top local blogs. When you are listing top 10 local sites please consider mine http://www.wamaitha.com. Its a personal empowerment blog. Thankyou.

@irene this list is somewhat outdated and it was arrived at using Alexa.com so can’t really “decide’ who is on the list except by their ranking? However, I plan to do some new list and we can see then what they look like.

Something new which is a unique solution to free websites is PowerPage.co.ke (you have to check this out). Also Bargains is revamped and a totally different concept, the most targeted advertising solution out there. And lastly, KilaKitu.co.ke which integrates inventory management with a free web and mobile site for all sellers, big or small. all sites are free.

Hi Moses, the online space in Kenya has developed by leaps and bounds since this post was published, especially with advances in e-commerce and the popularity of m-pesa. It would be great to see an updated list of the most popular websites to see how things have developed over the past few years. I would be particularly interested to see if any websites with .co.ke domain names would make it to the top 10 today. I recently launched http://www.onlinedating.co.ke and I am hoping to get the site to at least the top 100 in Kenya.

A new entrant is skiza.net. There you can post photos and videos, create pages, chat with friends etc. Its also great for small businesses as you can use a rich text editor to describe photos and videos you upload with clickable links to your website thereby increasing traffic and Google pagerank to your website.